


Remember

by jonsasnow



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, jon as captain america, jon x sansa - Freeform, jonsa, jonsa remix prompt, jonsa superhero au, sansa as the winter soldier, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 00:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12047196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonsasnow/pseuds/jonsasnow
Summary: It takes him seventy years to realise he’s in love with her and she’s no longer the girl he once knew. They’re both different now, fighting on different sides, him as Captain America and her as the ruthless Winter Soldier, but Jon refuses to believe this isn’t his Sansa and he’ll do whatever it takes to reach her.





	Remember

It has been seventy years since he crash landed in the Arctic, seventy years since he’s seen a familiar face, and although the technological advancements of the twenty-first century are something to marvel over, Jon doesn’t feel particularly that impressed by it. New York is harsher than he remembers, colder in a way that the war never brought out; people are always rushing from one place to another, shoving and yelling at each other without a modicum of respect. His New York wasn’t perfect, Jon knows this, and he remembers the injustices and the cruelty that lurked at every corner, but he misses the community. He misses his mum, though she died years before he ever even enlisted in the war, but most of all, he misses the Starks. Great big overprotective Robb, tough little Arya, kind and smart Bran and young baby Rickon.

But of course… _her._ Oh, he misses her like a bird longs for flight. In a way, the comparison is apt. She was his freedom, her smile his salvation and her eyes his home.

They hadn’t always been as close as they were. Sansa was different to the Starks. She longed for a life on the stage, to be front and centre, dancing and twirling batons to help lift the spirits of the troops overseas. It was her way of giving back, she always said. Jon never liked the idea, only so much as he didn’t like the idea of Sansa ever being anywhere near the line of duty, but once that girl sets her mind to something, she always does it.

It was a source of contention between them for much of their childhood. At first, Jon couldn’t understand why she would want to be a dancer. He was a stubborn ass though, so this wasn’t news; he simply couldn’t see how a dancing troupe could affect the war positively in any way. She should’ve been more like Arya, raring to fight alongside the men and doing her damndest to do so. That was true bravery in his eyes. But then that all changed.

Jon was walking home from the recruitment centre, rejected again for the umpteenth time for being medically unfit, when he came across a group of known bullies ragging on some poor kid only an inch shorter than Jon himself. The rage was abrupt, curling and roiling inside of him, and he had his hands in fists before he even stepped off the pavement. But a second later, Jon realised he didn’t have to. A sweet voiced called out, sharp and soft but no less demanding.

“Why don’t you boys pick on someone your own size, huh?” Sansa stepped up to the three large brutes. Jon felt his hackles rise, a deep, surprising need to protect her surging forward.

But she was smiling and it seemed to soften the blow as the three boys merely appraised her, taking in the curve of her hips, emphasised by the cinched waist of her dress. “This is America, dollface. We gotta show we’re tough. Letting these tweeds walk around while the rest are fighting ain’t good. You understand.”

Sansa’s smile tightened. “What I understand is you aren’t out there fighting either, so I suggest you go on get yourself enlisted before the girls around here find out you’re all cowards.”

“Hey, who said we haven’t! We were just –”

“I’m not saying anything,” Sansa interrupted with a pretty arch of her brow. She walked up to the one clearly in charge and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Big boys like you will surely do us all proud, right?”

Within seconds, Sansa had all three boys eating out of the palm of her hands before they all went scurrying away to prove their worth somewhere else. Almost as soon as they were gone, she hurried to kneel beside the younger boy and propped a hand behind his head.

“Hey, hey,” she murmured. “Are you alright there? Gosh, I’m so sorry about them. They’re mean ones. If my brother was home, he would’ve…” Sansa stopped abruptly and inhaled sharply, whilst shaking her head. “You remind me of someone, you know? Real tough guy too.”

The boy, barely a year or two older than Bran, sniffled and shook his head. “I’m not tough, miss.”

After getting the boy to sit up, Sansa inclined her head and smiled, genuinely now. “What? Looked like you were being mighty tough from where I was.” She gave a soft chuckle. “It’s easy to answer life with violence. It’s harder to weather its beatings.”

The boy looked doubtful as he wiped at his bloodied nose, the sleeve of his shirt coming away crimson and wet.

“Trust me,” Sansa said, helping him stand. “That someone I know? He’s real brave, just like you. Gets into more fights than you’d believe but he keeps going, you know? Keeps on getting up, putting up his fists like he knows what to do with ‘em. Real dumbass too, but… _brave_.”

That was him… Wasn’t it?

Jon couldn’t understand it. Never in his years of knowing the Starks had Sansa ever really spoken to him and yet she… admired him? It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. And with a clouded mind and a conflicted heart, Jon walked away that day, trying to reconcile this image of snobby Sansa Stark with the one he had just witnessed.

He started being nicer to her, saying little things, complimenting her, and she started reciprocating with teasing jabs at this or that. When Robb came home on leave, as the three eldest of the group, they went to the Carnival together – well, Jon, Sansa, Robb and his new girl, Margaery. It was there that Jon really became friends with her. It was hard not to form a bond after being ditched by her brother for the rest of the night and even harder for him not to grow attached to the eldest Stark daughter. Sansa was more than what people saw, more than just a pretty face and a soft voice with bright-eyed dreams; she was tough, smart and observant. She understood people in a way Jon never could.

Looking back on it now, Jon thinks he misses that part of Sansa the most.

Actually, that’s a lie. He misses every part of her, every inch of her soul, and if he has to burn the world to ash just to hear her laugh one more time, Jon thinks he might just do it.

It’s why he hesitates. There in Washington amidst the rubble and chaos of HYDRA soldiers firing at his people, Jon stops and he stares, and god, he thinks his heart has stopped beating completely, because standing in front of him is Sansa. Her hair is still as bright as copper; her eyes as blue as the summer sky; but now she is dressed in black with a metal arm and she’s glaring at him like she has no idea who he is.

“Sansa?”

Her brows furrow and she lets out a deep growl. “Who the hell is Sansa?”

It doesn’t make sense. He _saw_ her die. He saw her fall. When HYDRA attacked their base, Jon’s first thought wasn’t to his brothers of the Howling Commandos, it was to the dancing troupe still there. He had grabbed Sansa and took her with him, determined that no matter what happens, she’ll live. She has to. She’s too important to this world to die. And yet he had failed her. He watches her every night falling to her death in his dreams, watches as her face contorts with fear, anger and loathing before the light blinks out from her eyes. He failed her and… now, she’s here? How? _Why_?

It’s a question that haunts him day in and day out. It’s what fuels him to dismantle HYDRA and take down the helicarriers. And it is what stops him from laying one hand on her. He won’t touch her; he won’t hurt her. If she wants to kill him, she very well can. He more than deserves it.

“I’m not going to fight you, Sansa,” he says through a mouthful of blood as her fists continue to ram into his face. It’s hard to fathom this is the same girl that cried for a week straight when her dog got run over by a car or the same girl that stayed by Bran’s side for months on end when his accident left him paralysed from the waist down. The gentle, compassionate Sansa of his past is not the same as the one before him, but she’s still _his_ Sansa somewhere in there and he would never hurt her.

“Stop calling me that!” she yells but he sees the warring emotions in her eyes and her fists still. “I’m not… I don’t know who that is!”

“Yes, you do!” He grabs her fists gently and pulls her closer. Sansa falls onto his chest, her legs still straddling his hip. “Look at me, you _know_ me. We grew up together. In Brooklyn? Remember?”

“No!” she spits out as she tries to pull her fists away but it’s half-hearted. He knows because she’s punched him into a car only days before, so she definitely has the strength.

“You do, you do and that’s why you don’t want to hurt me,” Jon continues on, pushing harder than he ought to. “You’re Sansa Stark. You have three brothers, Robb, Bran and Rickon. And a sister named Arya. You once owned a dog you named Lady. You used to put bow ties around her ears.”

Her eyes glaze over. She’s looking through him like she’s seeing something there, a memory perhaps, and it fills him with hope. She’s remembering. She has to be…

“ _Jon!_ ” crackles a voice from some overhead PA system. “You gotta get that chip in place!”

Immediately, Sansa’s eyes return to their previous icy glare and she yanks her hands away from his forcefully. “NO!” she screams at him as she brings her hand back to punch again, but Jon is too quick, he curses himself as he throws her off him. He doesn’t want to hurt her and he’ll never lay a hand on her, but he has to get the chip in or millions will die.

Jon snorts humourlessly to himself as he races up the helicarrier to insert the chip. The greater good – it’s what he’s always operated towards and it’s what got Sansa killed.

But Jon doesn’t have time to reflect on much after that, the helicarrier explodes and he’s flung from the wreckage into the river below. He doesn’t remember much of what happens next but he wakes up on the muddy bank, and for the second time that day, he feels hope. There’s only one person who could’ve reached him that quickly and pulled him to shore. She remembers him.

When the world goes on the hunt for the Winter Soldier after the bomb killed dozens of diplomats at the Vienna International Centre, Jon realises he has to get there first. If they catch Sansa, they’ll kill her and he knows it isn’t her. He’s been tracking her since the Triskelion, or at least trying to, and he knows that at least for that day, Sansa had been nowhere near Vienna. Last he heard, she was in Romania, and so he gets on a jet and heads there with Tormund in tow and Val’s voice in his ear saying this is a bad idea. But he doesn’t care. He’s just had to bury Ygritte, a woman he loved, and he’s not about to do the same with Sansa.

The fight that ensues is familiar, reminiscent of the one down in Washington, yet he’s fighting _with_ her instead of against her and it feels… right. Jon’s never been in any situation where Sansa ever had to fight anyone back in their past, aside from that one time she slapped Margaery in the face for not showing up to Robb’s funeral, but it still feels like this is where he belongs. Too bad the combined superhuman strength and speed of both Captain America and the Winter Soldier isn’t enough to thwart the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre operatives (and some man named Grey Worm in a cat outfit). It does allow Jon time to try to speak some sense into his friends, plead with Daenerys and Val and the rest of them that Sansa isn’t bad, and that the real Sansa is still in there somewhere. It’s to no use though. Daenerys is adamant that Sansa is a threat, and though she commiserates with Jon, the fact is the world needs a scapegoat for Vienna and the Sokovia Accords still need to happen.

It’s a relief to him when Sansa manages to get loose. Tormund and Jon easily grab her and take her from the building, hiding her away in a basement like some shameful prisoner of war, but he hopes she knows that’s not what she is. He just wants her back; he _needs_ her back.

“Give us a minute,” Jon says quietly to Tormund.

The redheaded man looks incredulously back. “What? You do realise your girlfriend just tore through dozens of highly trained operatives and the Black Widow and… that Cat person, right?”

“His name is Grey Worm,” Jon sighs. “And she’s not my girlfriend.”

“ _Jon_.”

“Tormund, please. One minute,” he pleads now. He’s not above grovelling at this point, but he has to try again to get through to her.

“Fine. You’ve got one minute,” the other man huffs before leaving the room.

Sansa looks up at the click of the door, her eyes a little glassy and unfocused. Jon quickly strides across the room to kneel before her, probably too close for Tormund’s sanity of mind, but he doesn’t care. “Hey, are you okay?”

She snorts and lifts her wrists where the handcuffs jingle against the metal barrier. “Do I look okay?”

Jon smiles. “I’m sorry. You can understand why we had to… you know.” She shrugs and looks away from him. “Sansa, do you remember me?”

For a long second, she doesn’t answer and Jon starts to worry that Tormund will burst on through before she gets a chance to reply, but then finally, she says, “I remember… voices, images. That’s it.”

“But you remember my voice? My image?”

Sansa’s brows furrow forward. “Yes, but… you were smaller. Not you like this.” She jerks her head towards him.

“I _was_ smaller,” Jon laughs, relieved and elated. “Before the experiment.”

At the word, Sansa tenses and she begins to breathe heavily. Jon immediately goes to cup her face in his hands, forgetting for a moment that this isn’t the Sansa of his past and this isn’t some anxiety attack he can soothe like he used to do for her, but this Sansa does soften at his touch and suddenly, his heart is racing as he realises something.

“Do you trust me not to hurt you?”

Sansa catches his eye and frowns. “I don’t know. I want to say yes, but… I don’t know.”

“I’ll never hurt you, Sansa,” he whispers, his thumb gently grazing over her cheekbone. “As long as I can help it.” She sighs, but nods. “So I’m going to tell you something and I’m going to do something and I’m going to need you to promise not to punch me for it.”

“I…” She sighs again. “I promise.”

Inhaling deeply, Jon braces himself because he should’ve realised this sooner, seventy years ago in fact, but if this isn’t a second chance sent from the gods themselves then he really is a delusional idiot. “Sansa,” he starts softly. “A long, long time ago, we used to be friends. Best friends, actually. We told each other everything; we were always there for one another. And maybe that’s why I never realised it but I do now.”

“Realise what?” Sansa asks, her eyes full of curiosity and it reminds him so much of the girl he used to know that his heart clenches at the sight.

“That I love you,” Jon confesses. “Not as a friend. I _love_ you. Gods, if our world wasn’t so topsy turvy, I’d say I want to marry, grow old with you, have kids with you, but I don’t think that’s in our future.” He shakes his head. “All I do know is I love you and I’ve loved you for over seventy years.”

With those last words, Jon leans forward, bridging the gap between their lips, and pressing firmly against her. He doesn’t do much more than that; he doesn’t want to overwhelm her; but when he pulls away, he hears her sharp inhale of breath and he hopes that that’s a good sign.

Sansa’s eyes flutter before they open fully to stare at him. Her cheeks are flushed and she looks so beautiful despite the ragged clothes hanging off her body and the matted hair sticking to her forehead. “I don’t remember,” she says.

“I know.”

“Didn’t you expect me to remember?” Sansa asks, confused. He shakes his head and her confusion grows. “Then… why?”

“Because if we die tomorrow, I just need you to know,” Jon answers. “I don’t want to wait another seventy years to tell you again, Sans.”

She nods, staying painfully quiet. Tormund’s heavy footsteps echo in the corridor outside and they have only a few seconds left alone. Jon was resigned to this torturous fate when Sansa jerks forward and kisses him soundly on the lips. She’s more insistent now, more demanding and Jon isn’t ashamed to admit he lets a low groan make its way from deep in his throat.

“I want to remember,” she whispers, just as Tormund bursts into the room.

“Alright, lovebirds!” he booms. “Time to go kick ass and take names!”

Jon doesn’t know about that, but he knows in that moment that he _would_  burn the world to ashes if it meant saving her. 


End file.
